Birmingham residents urged to hurry up if they want to hold a Royal wedding street party

BIRMINGHAM City Council has announced details about how residents can go about holding a street party to celebrate the royal wedding.

BIRMINGHAM City Council has announced details about how residents can go about holding a street party to celebrate the royal wedding.

But organisers will have to be quick as the closing date for applications to the city council to close roads on the day of the wedding falls at the end of March.

As the nation gears up to celebrate William and Kate’s nuptials on April 29, the council is starting to receive requests from people wanting to hold street parties like the ones staged for the marriage of William’s parents, Prince Charles and Diana Spencer.

In these cost-conscious times, the council has decided to save money by processing all the applications in one go.

It will be doing this on April 1 so anyone interested in staging an event needs to contact the authority as soon as possible.

As staging a street party usually involves having to close the road on which it is being held, permission has to be obtained for a closure to be put in place.

Rather than processing all closures individually, the council plans to grant one overall Traffic Order which covers all approved closures across the city in a bid to minimise costs and administration.

Cabinet member for transport and the environment, Coun Timothy Huxtable, said: “We are making every effort to make the process of staging a street party as easy to understand as possible and would therefore urge anyone interested in running such an event to contact us as soon as possible.”

Before applying for a closure, it is recommended people contact the council informally for guidance.

Officers will be able to advise if an application is unlikely to succeed for any reason, such as if the road is on a bus route, provides access to key public or business premises or is on a major route.

Residents must also make sure they have public liability insurance to cover the event.

The cost of the closure will vary depending on the scale of work involved in processing and implementing specific closures.